After Watchmen
by Ascension of Dusk
Summary: Adrian killed millions to save billions. Rorschach's dead, just another one of those millions. Jon went to create life in another galaxy. Dan and Laurie are hoping to create some life of their own. What happens next? When the terrifying truth is known, will the world burn? Or will it be reborn? In-progress, and rated T. Just because.


November 8, 1985

* * *

"I leave it entirely in your hands."

Seymour stared dimly at the crank file, then at his own ketchup-dotted shirt. Seymour grimaced silently, before shuffling a few papers aside. Before him, there was a book - a small, dark brown hardcover book with 'Journal 1984-1985' embossed on the cover.

Gazing at it for a brief second, he picked it up, feeling the cold leather in his glove-like hands. He stroked it with his sausage-like thumb, briefly, before deciding to crack it open and check out its contents. Surely, provided he found it in the crank box of the New Frontiersman, the journal contained some kind of blue-bashing, government-smashing little secret or something.

Right?

He began to read aloud from the journal.

"'Rorschach's Journal. October 12th, 1985.'"

Seymour heard a faint choking sound from behind him; Seymour turned an eye as Hector Godfrey got out from his chair, eyes bulging with presumed shock.

"_Rorschach_'_s_ journal? Are you _serious_?" Hector exclaimed, trying to contain his excitement at the thought.

"Y-yeah. That's what it says here," Seymour replied, slightly confused at his employer's enthusiasm.

"Are you sure? Are you sure it isn't a fake or some kind of hack?"

Seymour shrugged, and kept reading.

"'Dog carcass in alley this morning. Tire treads on burst stomach. This city's afraid of me. I have seen its true face.' I think..."

Hector's face beamed, his mind filled with images of a trenchcoat-wearing vigilante in the rain at night.

"That's him! It is him! This _is_ Rorschach's journal, I swear it!" Hector half-screamed, almost pulsating. Unless the person who wrote this journal was an expert forger, he was convinced. The words in the journal had tangible perspective, tangible _purpose_.

Seymour kept reading.

"'The streets are extended gutters and the gutters are full of blood and when the drain scabs over all the vermin will drown. The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up to their waists and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout "Save Us!"... and I'll look down and whisper "No."'"

Hector's initial little boy-on-Christmas routine had ended for the most part, anticipation replaced with mild dissatisfaction.

"Well, I can obviously see where this is going, Seymour. Tell you what... you take it home tonight. Read through it; that's your homework. Come back to me tomorrow morning if you've found something we can publish."

"Fair enough, boss."

* * *

The rest of the day dragged on for Seymour, and by the time the clock scraped past 5 he already had one foot out the door. Figuratively, of course.

Leaving the boss to finish paperwork and lock up, Seymour gripped the journal in his pudgy hand and began the walk home. The round, bright yellow sun flickered hesistantly over the ochre New York City sky, shining through cracks in the low-lying buildings and casting a shadow in the giant crater that, previously, was known as greater Manhattan.

Seymour casually reflected that New York City had both physically and emotionally lost a part of itself that it would never regain. Whatever kind of alien creature that dropped down onto Times Square, writhing and screeching like demons from hell, had not only enacted a literal loss. It also enacted a figurative one.

As he thought about this, fragments from Rorschach's journal echoed cacophonously in his brain.

_They had a choice, all of them_._ They could have followed in the footsteps of good men like my father_,_ or President Truman_._ Decent men who believed in a day's work for a day's pay_.

Who was Rorschach's father? No one really knew that much about him, even after his incarceration. Only a name - Walter Joseph Kovacs - and a look of what was under that shifty little mask was given to the public. Short, ginger, generally ugly-looking. Aged 45. Nothing much else to count.

_Instead they followed the droppings of lechers and Communists and didn't realize the trail led over a precipice until it was too late. Don't tell me they didn't have a choice. _

Powerful words. This journal, in addition to a possible story, might give some valuable insight into Rorschach's potentially poetic consciousness. Of course, no one really read that much poetry these days, but it would still be interesting to take him apart and put him back together with America holding the tools.

_Now the whole world stands on the brink, staring into bloody hell, and all the liberals and intellectuals and smooth talkers... and all of the sudden, nobody can think of anything to say._

Standing atop the dismal front steps to his apartment, his keys jingled as they fit in the lock. Closing the door behind him, he tossed the journal down on a nearby table.

Seymour had some reading to do.

* * *

_Whose woods are these I think I know_

_His house is in the village though;_

_He will not be stopping here_

_To watch his woods fill up with snow_

_- Robert Frost, "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening"_


End file.
